The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams · 1944
Tom Wingfield remembers his mother's desperate attempts to find a gentleman caller for his painfully shy sister Laura. Williams called it a memory play, and it launched his career. It's his most autobiographical work: Tom is Williams, Laura is his sister Rose, and the play is an act of guilt and love that can't tell the two apart.
The case against
Williams scripted projected screen legends announcing each scene's theme, a device so heavy-handed that nearly every production since has cut it. What remains still over-explains: the unicorn loses its horn at the exact moment Laura's difference is broken, in case you missed it. Memory plays forgive haze; this one uses haze as an alibi for how little happens.
Drama · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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